Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (57 page)

Gentlemen, take notice that for being instrumental in that cause and interest of the Son of God, which hath been pleaded amongst us and which God hath witnessed to my appeals and wonderful victories, I am brought to this place to suffer death this day; and if I had ten thousand lives, I could freely and cheerfully lay them down all, to witness to this matter.

Oh, what am I, poor worm, that I should be accounted worthy to suffer anything for the sake of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I have gone joyfully and willingly, many a time, to lay down my life upon the account of Christ, but never with so much joy and freedom as at this time; I do not lay down my life by constraint, but willingly, for if I had been minded to have run away, I might have had many opportunities; but being so clear in the thing, I durst not turn my back, nor step a foot out of the way, by reason I had been engaged in the service of so glorious and great a God. However men presume to call it by hard names, yet I believe, ere it be long, the Lord will make it known from heaven that there was more of God in it than men are now aware of.

I do desire as from my own soul that they and everyone may fear the Lord, that they may consider their latter end, and so it may be well with
them; and even for the worst of those that have been most malicious against me, from my soul, I would forgive them all so far as anything concerns me; and so far as it concerns the cause and glory of God, I leave it for him to plead; and as for the cause of God, I am willing to justify it by my sufferings, according to the good pleasure of his will. I have been this morning, before I came hither, so hurried up and down stairs (the meaning whereof I knew not) that my spirits are almost spent; therefore, you may not expect much from me.

Oh, the greatness of the love of God to such a poor, vile, and nothing creature as I am! What am I, that Jesus Christ should shed his heart’s blood for me, that I might be happy to all eternity, that I might be made a son of God, and an heir of heaven! Oh, that Christ should undergo so great sufferings and reproaches for me! And should not I be willing to lay down my life, and suffer reproaches for him that hath so loved me; blessed be the name of God that I have a life to lose upon so glorious and so honorable an account.

I have one word more to the Lord’s people that desire to serve him with an upright heart; let them not think hardly of any of the good ways of God for all this; for I have been near this seven years a suffering person, and have found the way of God to be a perfect way, his word a tried word, a buckler to them that trust in him, and will make known his glorious arm in the sight of all nations. And though we may suffer hard things, yet he hath a gracious end, and will make a good end for his own glory and the good of his people; therefore be cheerful in the Lord your God, hold fast that which you have and be not afraid of suffering, for God will make hard and bitter things sweet and easy to all that trust in him; keep close to the good confession you have made of Jesus Christ, and look to the recompense of reward; be not discouraged by reason of the cloud that now is upon you, for the sun will shine, and God will give a testimony unto what he hath been doing, in a short time.

And now I desire to commit my concernments into the hands of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, he that hath delivered himself for the chief of sinners; he that came into the world, was made flesh, and was crucified; that hath loved me and washed me from my sins in his own blood, and is risen again, sitting at the right hand of God, making intercession for me.

And as for me, Oh! who am I, poor, base, vile worm, that God should deal thus by me? For this will make me come the sooner into his glory, and to inherit the kingdom and that crown prepared for me. Oh, I have served a good Lord and Master, which hath helped me from my beginning to this day, and hath carried me through many difficulties, trials,
straits, and temptations, and hath always been a very present help in time of trouble; he hath covered my head many times in the day of battle; by God I have leaped over a wall, by God I have run through a troop, and by my God I will go through this death, and he will make it easy to me, Now into thy hands, O Lord Jesus, I commit my spirit!

At the market cross in Edinburgh, rebel Richard Rumbold came to the gallows in June of 1685, after the failure of the Monmouth rebellion. Having supported Cromwell, Rumbold was among the Puritan leaders to be executed following the restoration of the Stuarts, specifically for his actions against the monarchy. The republican sentiments of his final words, however, continued to make an impression almost a century later, in the rhetoric of the American Revolution.

Particularly forceful in this gallows speech is Rumbold’s attack on “booted and spurred” privilege, a phrase that came to suggest the “man on horseback” imagery of dictatorship. Through rhetorical questions and biblical allusions (to the destruction that occurs in stories of Adam and
Eve, Noah, and Nimrod), he emphasizes his view of “a deluded generation, veiled with ignorance.” Rumbold’s commentary on his generation, with “popery and slavery be riding in upon them,” sets up the horseback imagery of his most memorable phrase.

***

IT IS FOR
all men that come into the world once to die; and after death the judgment! And since death is a debt that all of us must pay, it is but a matter of small moment what way it be done. Seeing the Lord is pleased in this manner to take me to himself, I confess, something hard to flesh and blood, yet blessed be his name, who hath made me not only willing but thankful for his honoring me to lay down the life he gave, for his name; in which, were every hair in this head and beard of mine a life, I should joyfully sacrifice them for it, as I do this. Providence having brought me hither, I think it most necessary to clear myself of some aspersions laid on my name; and, first, that I should have had so horrid an intention of destroying the king and his brother…. It was also laid to my charge that I was antimonarchical. It was ever my thoughts that kingly government was the best of all where justly executed; I mean, such as it was by our ancient laws—that is, a king, and a legal, free-chosen Parliament—the king having, as I conceive, power enough to make him great; the people also as much property as to make them happy; they being, as it were, contracted to one another! And who will deny me that this was not the justly constituted government of our nation? How absurd is it, then, for men of sense to maintain that though the one party of his contract breaketh all conditions, the other should be obliged to perform their part? No, this error is contrary to the law of God, the law of nations, and the law of reason. But as pride hath been the bait the devil hath caught most by ever since the creation, so it continues to this day with us. Pride caused our first parents to fall from the blessed state wherein they were created—they aiming to be higher and wiser than God allowed, which brought an everlasting curse on them and their posterity. It was pride caused God to drown the old world. And it was Nimrod’s pride in building Babel that caused that heavy curse of division of tongues to be spread among us, as it is at this day, one of the greatest afflictions the church of God groaneth under, that there should be so many divisions during their pilgrimage here; but this is their comfort that the day draweth near where, as there is but one shepherd, there shall be but one sheepfold. It was, therefore, in the defense of this party, in their just rights and liberties, against popery and slavery—

[Being here interrupted by drum beating, he said that they need not trouble themselves, for he should say no more of his mind on that subject, since they were so disingenuous as to interrupt a dying man. He then continued:]

I die this day in the defense of the ancient laws and liberties of these nations; and though God, for reasons best known to himself, hath not seen it fit to honor us, as to make us the instruments for the deliverance of his people, yet as I have lived, so I die in the faith that he will speedily arise for the deliverance of his church and people. And I desire of all you to prepare for this with speed. I may say this is a deluded generation, veiled with ignorance, that though popery and slavery be riding in upon them, do not perceive it; though I am sure there was no man born marked of God above another; for none comes into the world with a saddle on his back, neither any booted and spurred to ride him; not but that I am well satisfied that God hath wisely ordered different stations for men in the world, as I have already said; kings having as much power as to make them great and the people as much property as to make them happy. And to conclude, I shall only add my wishes for the salvation of all men who were created for that end.

“Incorruptible” was the contemporary description applied to Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre, controversial leader of the French Revolution. With a concern more for championing “virtue” than for maintaining political friendships or meeting the material needs of the people, he fell out of favor as quickly as he had ascended to power. In the same way that the Reign of Terror had executed any and all political opponents, so Robespierre himself was not able to escape a death sentence.

On July 26, 1794, he addressed the National Convention to deny charges made against him and to seek another purge of his enemies. The next morning, however, the Convention ordered his arrest, and he was guillotined the following day.

In the July 26 address, his final speech, Robespierre speaks directly to “Frenchmen” and “my people.” He delineates the powers of virtue and vice that have commingled in the Revolution and, with a series of rhetorical questions, refuses to allow his sense of virtue to give way to vice. That refusal to compromise, and the memory of his implacable bloodiness, led inevitably to Robespierre’s execution at the age of thirty-six.

***

WHEN I SEE
the mass of vices the torrent of the Revolution has rolled pell-mell with the civic virtues, I have sometimes trembled for fear of becoming tainted in the eyes of posterity by the impure vicinage of those perverse men who mingled in the ranks of the sincere defenders of humanity; but the overthrow of the rival factions has, as it were, emancipated all the vices; they believed that the only question for them was to make division of the country as a booty rather than make her free and prosperous. I am thankful that the fury that animates them
against everything that opposes itself to their projects has traced the line of demarcation between them and all right-minded people; but if the Verres and the Catilines of France believe themselves already far enough advanced in the career of crime to expose on the rostrum the head of their accuser, I also have but now promised to my fellow citizens a testament formidable to the oppressors of the people, and I bequeath to them from this moment opprobrium and death!

I conceive that it is easy for the league of the tyrants of the world to overwhelm a man; but I also know what are the duties of one who can die in defending the cause of humanity. I have seen in history all defenders of liberty overcome by ill fortune or by calumny; but soon their oppressors and their assassins also met their death. The good and the bad, the tyrants and the friends of liberty, disappear from the earth, but under different conditions. Frenchmen, do not allow your enemies to degrade your souls and to unnerve your virtues by a baleful heresy! No, Chaumette, no, Fouchet, death is not an unending sleep. Citizens, efface from the tombstones this impious maxim which throws a funeral crape upon all nature and flings insults upon death. Rather engrave that: “Death is the beginning of immortality!” My people, remember that if in the republic justice does not reign with absolute sway, and if this word does not signify love of equality and of country, then liberty is but a vain phrase! O people, you who are feared—whom one flatters! you who are despised; you who are acknowledged sovereign, and are ever being treated as a slave—remember that wherever justice does not reign, it is the passions of the magistrates that reign instead, and that the people have changed their chains and not their destinies!

Remember that there exists in your bosom a league of knaves struggling against public virtue, and that it has a greater influence than yourselves upon your own affairs—a league that dreads you and flatters you in the mass, but proscribes you in detail in the person of all good citizens!

Also recall that, instead of sacrificing this handful of knaves for your happiness, your enemies wish to sacrifice you to this handful of knaves—authors of all our evils and the only obstacles to public prosperity!

Know, then, that any man who will rise to defend public right and public morals will be overwhelmed with outrage and proscribed by the knaves! Know, also, that every friend of liberty will ever be placed between duty and calumny; that those who cannot be accused of treason will be accused of ambition; that the influence of uprightness and principles will be compared to tyranny and the violence of factions; that your confidence and your esteem will become certificates of proscription for all your friends; that the cries of oppressed patriotism will be called cries
of sedition; and that, as they do not dare to attack you in mass, you will be proscribed in detail in the person of all good citizens, until the ambitious shall have organized their tyranny. Such is the empire of the tyrants armed against us. Such is the influence of their league with corrupt men, ever inclined to serve them.

Thus the unprincipled wretches impose upon us law to force us to betray the people, under penalty of being called dictators! Shall we subscribe to this law? No! Let us defend the people at the risk of becoming their victims! Let them hasten to the scaffold by the path of crime and we by that of virtue. Shall we say that all is well? Shall we continue to praise by force of habit or practice that which is wrong? We would ruin the country. Shall we reveal hidden abuses? Shall we denounce traitors? We shall be told that we are unsettling the constituted authorities, that we are endeavoring to acquire personal influence at their cost. What are we to do? Our duty! What objection can be made to him who wishes to tell the truth and who consents to die for it? Let us then say that there exists a conspiracy against public liberty; that it owes its strength to a criminal coalition that is intriguing even in the bosom of the Convention; that this coalition has accomplices in the Committee of General Safety and in the offices of this committee, which they control; that the enemies of the republic have opposed this committee to the Committee of Public Safety and have thus constituted two governments; that members of the Committee of Public Safety have entered into this scheme of mischief; that the coalition thus formed tries to ruin all patriots and the fatherland.